Is It Okay To Skip The Tip For Bad Service?

The past couple days, it’s been in the news that DeAngelo Williams, running back for The Pittsburgh Steelers, got called out by a waitress on social media for leaving a 75-cent “tip” on a $128.25 meal.

Just now at work I had Deangelo Williams come in and I waited on while tending bar. His check was $128.25. He left me $129 with no tip but .75 cents. So there you go Stealers fans, your running back is cheap as s**t!!! Smh

Just saying – our Editor-In-Chief is Pittsburgh born-and-raised and pities the fool jagoff who misspells “Steelers”, but okay. (He wants to be welcome back for visits, so we had to include this.)

Anyway, the waitress was terminated.

The restaurant manager apologized and offered DeAngelo a free meal on his next visit.

DeAngelo made his case in a series of Tweets – and because he did so with a great deal of passion and eloquence, we’ll allow the man’s own words to stand for themselves:

You right I tried to leave exact change but couldn’t I waited on my food for over 1.5hours got the order wrong then https://t.co/rCqpGGdxmv

DeAngelo Williams Responded Fairly To The Waitress Calling Him Out For The 75-Cent Non-Tip

This issue is a lot larger than whether or not you should leave a tip even if you get bad service.

In the first place, freedom of speech does not include freedom from the consequences of said speech. You hit someone in public – especially a celebrity with a megaphone – expect them to hit back ten times harder, ten times as publicly.

In the second place, it’s so tempting to attack that “rich, heartless big-shot” based on a headline. To be fair, the headline of the TMZ article caused us the same initial reaction. Then we read the article, saw all sides of the story, and reached a far different conclusion.

In the third place,

The Manager Is Also Right To Give DeAngelo A Free Meal Next Time

Actually it’s the very least that manager could do.

While we are taking DeAngelo’s part in this controversy, let’s ask some questions about what the waitress was dealing with even before the Steelers’ running back and his five friends walked in the door:

Did she work in an environment where going the extra mile for a customer gets rewards? Or, was she lambasted previously for “wasting product” and reminded she’s “just a waitress” that other time a customer had to wait so long for a salad and she threw in a little something extra to make it right?

Had she stood up for herself previously when customers actually abused her – and rather than management hearing her side and taking up for her if appropriate, cut her off and told her to shut up or they’d find someone else?

Are the entire staff of the restaurant – servers, kitchen staff, chefs, buspersons – aligned with the mission and goals? Do they all understand how a poor job performance on their part can cost their colleague? Was the actress really more upset by the kitchen who screwed her out of a tip by taking so long to deliver a (botched) salad, THEN they “fixed” it by just dumping the incorrect ingredients (and forgetting to remove that one fish tail)… but taking it on DeAngelo for whatever reasons of her own?

On a similar note, are the waitresses forced to deal with dissatisfied customers with neither effective training and support, nor backup when needed? Next time you call customer service and that person on the other end of the phone can’t solve your problem, ask yourselves how many times they have taken the same issue to management, only to be told to “handle it” even when it was clear the customers have a point (like a hosting company that has crap servers that keep crashing and knocking customers offline, but management won’t buy adequate servers).

See, talking about “was the waitress justified” and “was DeAngelo justified” is an analysis of symptoms.

Could there be an underlying illness that needs treated?

Maybe the manager gets an A+ on all these points above, and the waitress was acting unprofessionally. Maybe he doesn’t.

Maybe his superiors have been leaving him in the same lurch, and when he tried to go upward and say “this is another example of what I’ve been saying about the budget issue that leaves us so short-staffed” they told him “Give DeAngelo a free meal and make this go away, or we’ll make your job go away.”

Just some food for thought.

We Know There Are Some Amazing Waitstaff Out There, So Let’s End On An Encouraging Note

A long time ago, in a century far, far away, Jackie Gleason was at a restaurant with some pals. Their waiter was giving them some serious “above and beyond” level service.

As he was leaving, Gleason pulled the waiter aside and said “Hey kid, what’s the biggest tip you’ve ever gotten?”

The waiter replied that someone had given him $100 once.

Gleason pulled a horse-choker of a wad of C-notes out of his pocket, peeled off two bills, and handed the waiter his new biggest-tip-ever – $200. Then, as an afterthought: “Say, kid… you mind telling me who gave you that $100 tip?”

The waiter replied, with a huge grin, “You did, Mr. Gleason, last time you were here.”

Do good work, and the rewards will come. Perhaps not as you expected, but they’ll show up.